UPDATE: As of August 15th, 2012, YOUR DREAM MACHINE is a #1 Best Seller in SEVEN categories on Amazon.com!

I have had the opportunity and pleasure to co-author a new book called “YOUR DREAM MACHINE“, with Jane Willhite and many other amazing authors. I stopped “aspiring” to be a writer and started doing something about it! This book project is part of my personal dream machine. Please buy a copy today! There are fabulous free bonus gifts worth thousands to those who pre-order. THANK YOU so much for your support!

When I read a great book, see a great movie, or attend a great seminar, there is always something that sticks with me more than anything else. It’s the ‘ah ha’ of the experience and it’s not always what I expect or even the primary subject of the material. Yet it is profound, and often becomes more meaningful over time. My theory is this learning experience increases our awareness, and it represents a window, that may open up a whole new world–once we grasp the full meaning. We become aware of what is possible in a very personal sense.

I had the opportunity to see and experience Mr. Lee Brower at Principia 2007. He introduced The Brower Quadrant, a system for creating True Wealth. I was so intrigued by his system and philosophy that wanted to know more–so I attended a small conference of his, called the Quadrant Living Experience. I learned many great things, yet the ‘ah ha’ for me was this:

This is the way I remember it. It’s not exactly the way Lee presented it, yet profound for me nonetheless–I truly internalized this lesson.

CLARITY >>> ENERGY: Knowing what you want to do and where you want to go creates energy. The opposite is also true–lack of clarity creates uncertainty and generally depresses us.

BALANCE >>> VELOCITY: I love the analogy of a car and it’s tires–if all 4 tires are not balanced, it creates wobble, which prevents the car from performing well. For me the 4 tires represent the 4 areas of our life. Lee uses his 4 quadrants: Core, Experience, Contribution, and Financial. I like to apply the 4 sides of the Peace-of-Mind Square: Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual. If we’re in balance in these 4 areas, we can naturally increase our Velocity–the ability to do more in less time.

FOCUS >>> ACCURACY: Lee puts it best “If you have clarity and balance you understand what matters most. That allows you to focus on those activities that generate the greatest results. You don’t waste effort on activities that may be important but are not essential to achieving optimal results. The outcome of Focus is Accuracy! You achieve more with less effort.”

(ENERGY + VELOCITY + ACCURACY) >>> CONFIDENCE: If you are creating energy, velocity, and accuracy in your daily life, you are creating confidence. People are attracted to confidence, and repelled by the lack of it. The more confidence you create, the greater the opportunities, relationships, and experiences you will attract in your life.

The whole world is reeling and reflecting on the passing of Steve Jobs. I have seen countless articles and personal accounts of how Steve has impacted people around the world.

This one is about his impact on me personally.

His vision and execution, his obsession with aesthetic design, his unwillingness to give up on what he loved doing in the face of failure are all reasons I consider Steve a great Mentor and example of human potential. His Stanford Commencement address in 2005 is one of those truly inspiring speeches that will stand the test of time. Steve Jobs was a Leader of Self.

Mac vs. PC aside, I believe Steve put the “Personal” in Personal Computer. IBM used the name, yet Apple and Steve in particular evangelized and delivered on what is without a doubt the most “personal” of computers, music devices, and now mobile technology that has ever existed. Whether it was his vision for Calligraphy and typeface fonts in the Mac, making a bet on the mouse, fantastic hardware and software designs, or his showmanship in releasing the next great user experience–he always made it “personal” for us, the end user.

I had the opportunity to see Steve at his last show in June at the Apple World Wide Developer’s conference (WWDC11 San Francisco). Although thin and gaunt, he delivered iCloud and iOS5 with the same Passion I have witnessed for 30 years. The difference is he knows he’s made a significant contribution in this world. This is something i admire greatly.

Thank You Steve! You will be missed. Rest In Peace.– Shawn Robin Davison

My Experiences with Apple and the influence of Steve Jobs

I had my first experience with Apple in 1979, while attending BYU Education Week with my parents. I was 12 years old, and I had the opportunity to go to an ‘Introduction to Computers’ class. This first computer experience was on an Apple ][. From then on I was hooked–I knew I would be doing something with computers.

I worked for almost two years to earn the money to buy an Apple computer. By then the Apple ][ Plus had been released. $1,782 top of the line with 48K of RAM! I paid attention to everything Steve Jobs said–after all, I had invested my entire savings in Apple.

Things took off from there–I learned to program in Basic. I was instrumental in getting my school district to invest in computers. I was student teaching UCSD Pascal and Forth as a Junior in High School. I was a Nerd. I was the coolest Nerd around.

I upgraded to an Apple IIe, and not long after that the Mac was introduced in January 1984. My Dad bought one of the first Macintosh computers in early 1984. I was jealous and happy at the same time, as he loved to write and this transformed his life from typewriter to Macintosh.

DeVRY Institute of Technology came to my high school recruiting–it was a no brainer for me. I started DeVRY 3 weeks after high school–not much of a summer break. The sad news was they were teaching COBOL, as much of the business world was still dependent on it, and all their computers were ugly IBM PCs or IBM mainframes.

For 20 years after graduating from college, I used Mac PowerBooks off and on depending on the company and culture. I also had the opportunity to work with NeXT in the early 90’s. It was an expensive box, yet in my position at that time, I was doing R&D for US WEST (Qwest -> Century Link), and we could justify it–barely.

The NeXT Cube is the only computer I have held onto as a prized collectable. It was truly before it’s time, with hi-res GUI, optical storage, and 400 DPI printing. I even went to class to learn Objective-C, never imagining that it would be the language for creating mobile (iPhone, iPad) software 20 years later.

Today, a significant portion of my business (DV·mobile) is building software for the iPhone and iPad mobile devices for companies around the world! What I do for a living and my professional passion–creating great software, is directly a result of the influence that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have had on me since I was 12 years old!

Again, Thank You Steve for the magnificent contribution you have made!

I love stories about people that love life and live it to their fullest. I have a good friend, Heather Morgan, aka Chief Penguin, who shared with me an incredible story about her grandfather.

Glenn Morgan, who just recently turned 90 years young, celebrated his birthday by skydiving with his family. He took his first dive at age 80, and made a vow he would do it every 10 years. He is obviously a man of his word!

Well, if Glenn can do it, I can do it! I’m looking forward to skydiving when I hit 90!

Heather, thank you for letting me share these pics on my blog–they’re awesome!

“Here’s to being 90 and keeping your sense of adventure!!” – Heather Morgan

Have you ever taken a seminar or class that had so much value that you wanted to take it over again to absorb things you didn’t get the first time? Maybe to apply the principles you learned to new challenges in your life?

There is only one class I’ve ever wanted to take more than once–The PSI Basic Seminar. Fortunately, graduates of the Basic can take it again, known as a “re-audit” at no extra charge, for life…

I first took The Basic almost 8 years ago. The value I received from it then was incredible. I have since experienced all of the seminars PSI offers, and introduced many other people to experience it as well. The value they have created has far exceeded anything I could have imagined!

The Basic is literally the best money I have ever spent on me. It is truly fuel for life–I will leverage the tools I have learned from it the rest of my life.

Thank you Peter and Monika for taking a risk and experiencing the Basic this weekend!

Please let me know if you know the answer–I haven’t yet figured it out… However, I do have some specific requirements and ideas on how it should work. I’ve done a lot of reading and homework on the topic, yet not invested in LightRoom or Aperture, which appear to be the choices available to professional photographers. From what I can tell, they just don’t quite do the things I have in mind…

Here are the big items I’m looking for:

Virtual storage across multiple locations

The ability to store pics on multiple drives, but manage them as if they are part of one massive collection.

This would include the ability to pull and cache sub-collections based on interest and work I am doing, ideally from anywhere I am connected, not just at home connected to my archive drives.

Touch-based sorting and filtering with Tag-based hiding

Sorting photos and filtering out the great ones from the not so great ones, is one of, if not the most time consuming task in my photo work. The coverflow-UI on the Mac works fairly well, but still leaves something to desire.

My ideal sorting and filtering app is an iPad app that enables me to select and pull collections in with pinch of my fingers, just as the photo app works today; however, what I think would work great is to be able to select and hide photos based on tags using multi-touch. This of course works seamlessly with PC and Mac, such that when I get back to my desktop I see and have the sorted and tagged photo collections ready for resizing, color correction, and publishing…

We are in a rebirth or revival of garage startup companies. Garage in the sense of creative innovation that is happening in the least likely places, with minimal resources and cash-flow. The best analogy is that of the original garage startup days, way back when Stephen and Steve created Apple Computer, and Bill and Paul were crafting what would become Microsoft.

This new renaissance is in stark contrast to the Internet boom (1996 – 2000). So much so, it is worth a side-by-side comparison of the culture and mindset shift that has occurred over the last 10 years.

Garage startup is a term right out of the 1970’s in the early age of microcomputers. A bit of trivia–Steve Wozniak got credit in the Encyclopedia Britannica, with his buddy Steve Jobs in the photo, but Steve Jobs isn’t mentioned in the article, just a credit in the photo…so much for the marketing guy 😉

The Twist of Lime is a combination of social dynamics and green culture. There has been a massive tide shift or mindset change toward “Green”. This in combination with a social revolution that enables you to connect to anyone on the planet who has a network connection is very powerful. Thanks to Facebook, social networks are now part of our lives…whether we like it or not 😉

I am enjoying the Green Days…I expect there will be a new breed of super companies that will emerge from this period–even faster than Google or Facebook. The Boom will come much faster this time around, with a Bust right behind it, and the cycle will continue…

This is a fairly esoteric problem; however, after not finding other succinct explanations and spending many hours figuring it out, I thought it worth sharing…

The Problem

When using multiple ssh keys on MacOS 10.6.3, it was using the first one configured, and ignoring the other identities if going to the same server. I wanted a key for subversion access and a separate key for interactive Admin access.

I finally discovered that this was client problem due to ssh agent caching of the keys. The agent will ‘try’ an existing key in cache for the same host before asking for a new key, even if you specify an –I or IdentityFile option on the command line, or specify an Identity file in the .ssh/config file.

The Problem Scenario Setup

I wanted to install my own Subversion Repository in my ISP account (bluehost.com).

The above error occurs when the remote tunnel command, ‘svnserve –t’ in this case, is not found in the path on the server. Due to limitations of bluehost.com, I can only have one ssh login, and they do not allow .ssh/environment configuration or have a default path to ~/bin for non-interactive logins. My first attempt to fix this was a solution to modify the command that is being sent by the svn client. This worked on the command line; however, subversion SCM access in Xcode failed with the following error:

This made me realize I needed a server solution, not a client fix. I proceeded with the only other known solution I could find, which called for creating ssh key pairs, and prepending a custom command to the authorized_key entry on the server, similar to the following, potentially with more security options:

command=”~/bin/svnserve -t” ssh-rsa <key…>

Finally, the root problem for creating this blog entry…was that only the first ssh key created would be recognized and used, and it would be used regardless of what id or subdomain I wanted on the server, even when configuring a client side .ssh/config file.

Now we’re back to the problem at the top of the page…when I login with ssh using the subversion key, it overrides the the admin key, and I’m not able to do an interactive login, and vica-versa.

The Solution

The solution has to do with a special option (-k) on the MacOS agent command ssh-add, which enables all keys in the keychain to put in the cache for use.

Assuming multiple keys are setup on the client in ~/.ssh and the public counter parts on the server in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys or authorized_keys2 if your server requires ssh Protocol 2, then the following MacOS command will enable multiple keys to be used on the same server:

It’s no secret that I am a fan of Steve Jobs. When I was 12 years old, my first real computer experiences were on an Apple II. I had earned enough money to buy my own Apple IIe by age 15 (almost $2,000), and was student-teaching UCSD Pascal as a junior in high school. I somehow got my father interested in computers along the way, and he bought the first generation Macintosh in 1984 with a whopping 128K of memory.

After college, I had the opportunity to work with the NeXT Cube and NeXTStep operating system. I still have a NeXT Cube collecting dust in the garage–awaiting it’s place in some museum or geek display.

All along, I have admired what Steve J. & Steve W. started way back then. In the last few years, Apple has transformed multiple industries, including music and now telecommunication and mobile technology.

It was great to see Steve LIVE @ the WWDC this year, and I hope to have the opportunity to meet him up close and in-person in the near future.

I highly recommend you watch this video of Steve addressing the graduating class of 2005 at Stanford University. He is authentic and full of wisdom.

Being LIVE at Apple’s World-wide Developers conference seeing Steve Jobs unveil the new iPhone is a big deal! More so than I anticipated. He is such a showman, it feels a bit like it being at a Circus, awaiting the unveiling of the next amazing death defying trick. We are truly in a time of amazing innovation, and it is accelerating with suprising velocity. Check out the new iPhone 4 here. More to come.